Within the past eighteen months, at least three major medical associations in the United Kingdom have voted to support liberalized abortion policies—to the extent of "opening up abortion throughout pregnancy for any reason." John Ritenbaugh gathers evidence proving that, despite the public's lack of support for loosening abortion laws, the leadership in the medical profession are weakening standards to the point that human life means nothing.

Our culture appears to be in steep decline, a fact we can see in the undermining of marriage throughout society. Despite having served mankind well down through the millennia, the institution of marriage is crumbling under a three-pronged attack engineered by Satan the Devil. John Ritenbaugh teaches that marriage is vital to understanding God's purpose and learning to live in harmony with one another.

Martin Collins, focusing on the Prophet Habakkuk, whose name means "one who embraces" or "one who clings," suggests that a major theme of the Book of Habakkuk is the importance of clinging to God regardless of the vicissitudes of life. Habakkuk's prophecy seems to be up-to-date when describing God's called out ones today, who are compelled to cling to God as evil change agents threaten to destroy our civilization. Habakkuk evidently lived following the times of Josiah's massive reforms, a time of spiritual decay following the bright times of Josiah, a transitional time something like we are experiencing today, a time the law is powerless and justice no longer prevails. We should never be tripped up when we see bad things happen to good people or vice versa, realizing that history is indeed following God's timetable. God's timing is perfect. We should never doubt the justice of God, remembering that terrible events cannot separate us from the love of God. When we feel overwhelmed, we need to (1) stop and think, refraining from rash speaking, (2) calmly restate basic principles, (3) put events in their right context, and (4) return to God for further clarification. Habakkuk followed this formula as he reflected upon every attribute of God, realizing that God had been continually faithful to His people and that the impending invasion of the Babylonians was not the last event in God's plan, but only a tool in bringing about God's ultimate purpose. Like Habakkuk, we must detach ourselves from the problem at hand, return to the ramparts and seek God's counsel, staying in the watchtower, seeking God in prayer and study until God gives us the answer, remembering that the just shall live by faith.

Clyde Finklea, reflecting on Bob Dylan's lyrics in "The Times They Are A-changin'," reminds us that within hours of Herbert W. Armstrong death, destructive heresies were imported into our previous fellowship by false teachers and ministers. Paul warned Timothy of perilous times to come about at the end of the age, when the character traits of individuals would become predominantly selfish, unforgiving, and unable to control their own impulses. Sadly, the mindset of society has begun to infiltrate the church, causing some of us to leave our first love by compromising the Sabbath and falling into the Commandment -breaking world, God's called-out ones need to wake up and strengthen those things which remain, yielding to God's sovereignty, rejecting the rule of the god of this world, Satan.

John Ritenbaugh, asking whether conservatism is dead, especially in the context of the current political climate, defines conservatism as an inclination to maintain existing order and institutions, opposing radical change. Further , he defines liberalism as an inclination to espouse 'progress' or 'reform,' 'broad-mindedness,' and 'tolerance,' except for religious orthodoxy, while ushering in a secular, 'progressive' humanist agenda. The Republican Party, supposedly safeguarding conservative principles, is controlled by establishment R.I.N.O.s (Republican in name only) who have shamelessly capitulated on every advance of the leftist, collectivist agenda of this current Administration, plunging this country into a far-left socialist tyranny. The average man on the street does not understand that the promise of government "freebies" constitutes deceptive bait, luring the gullible into abject slavery and bondage. Anti-God liberal philosophies trickled down from the educators in the universities into the public schools. The decline of orthodox teaching in the churches has led to an inclusive, big-tent, tolerant approach to moral degeneracy, with standards in a constant state of flux. God's laws are not liberal despite some claims of Protestant Dispensationalists. God, as the most Conservative of all Beings, is alive and does not change. Our culture is witnessing an ascendancy of immorality and law-breaking with everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.

John Ritenbaugh quotes from a shocking letter from 91-year-old former President Jimmy Carter, who asserts that we no long have a true democratic republic in the United states, but instead we are being ruled by an unelected oligarchy (rule by a few elite). Today, we have a government glued together with special interests, leveraging bribes and blackmail to advance failed social programs. No longer do we have a true representative democracy, but a small group of wealthy elite are pulling the strings, transforming our government into a leftist, socialist tyranny, allowing a handful of evil, avaricious men to tap into the public treasury, deluding the gullible public into thinking they are taking care of the people by redistributing the wealth, stealing from the productive and giving it to the unproductive, totally at odds with God’s principles of stewardship. The obstreperous demagogues promising economic goodies from the womb to the tomb have not yet matured to the realization that there is no such thing as a free lunch. We no longer have a trustworthy government. Our ethics and morality, our freedom, our wealth, our dignity, and self-respect, are rapidly eroding away under the willing guidance by a criminal oligarchy, inspired by the prince and power of the air, the current ruler of the world. The judgments of God against this corrupt system have already begun.

John Ritenbaugh, citing Romans 1:18-20, asserts that, even though the existence of the Everlasting Deity can easily be accessed by reason and observation, Satan, having worked feverishly through philosophers and educators in the western world, to where Jacob's children had migrated, employing the distorted 'luminaries' (such as Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Marx), succeeded in deceiving and dumbing-down the overwhelming majority of the citizenry in the world to accept immorality as the norm and righteousness or morality as the aberration. Philosophers and educators have been Satan's chief tools in recent history. God has allowed Satan to do his work, realizing that all humans, including Adam and Eve, Job, Abraham and his offspring, desperately required testing, adjustment, and character-shaping. God does things in patterns; the kind of rigor our original parents Adam and Eve were subjected to as well as all the subsequent biblical luminaries, is the same kind of rigor. His current work—- the Israel of God, the called-out Church—is subjected to. We are now the chief focus of God's work on this earth.

John Ritenbaugh reiterates that, although the American Constitution, ratified over 225 years ago, was based on the necessity of retaining a knowledge of God and His Laws, America has been in a moral freefall from the time it had become involved in the World War I. Of the things God says He hates in Proverbs 6:16, including pride and hands that shed innocent blood, nothing seems to be more disgusting than the American abortion industry, which has murdered far more innocent lives than did Hitler and Stalin—combined. Carolyn Payne, an Ob/Gyn abortion specialist, a self-professed Christian, proudly claims that 'Christianity' prepared her to murder babies on behalf of women's 'rights.' She thanks her parental upbringing for enabling her, from the time of her teen-aged years apparently, to use birth control, ostensibly to be able to fornicate as freely as men do and not suffer any stigmatizing consequences, thereby accommodating sex while ignoring morality. Perhaps millions of other young adults, along with Carolyn, have been conditioned by their 'Christian' families to become promiscuous and self-indulgent, the antithesis of the godly woman in Proverbs 31.

John Ritenbaugh, reflecting on an article in Christianity Today which suggests that American Christians are becoming increasingly confused about whether abortion is equivalent to murder, concludes that we live in a moral garbage dump, every bit as vile as Sodom and Gomorrah. America (and the other Israelitish nations), like mother-like daughter, disgustingly has eclipsed the sins of Sodom and Egypt and is the primary target of Ezekiel's prophecies, words which were written after the captivity of Judah and Israel. Ezekiel's prophecies are unfolding right now, before our eyes, describing contemporary news events—real end-time material. Sadly, the haughtiness with which modern Judah and Israel embraces immorality makes the people of Sodom appear moral in comparison.

John Ritenbaugh focuses on the apostle Paul's response to the bitter altercation between Euodia and Syntyche, women church leaders at Philippi, who succeeded in polarizing the congregation by their contentious pride, placing their obsessive desire to be right over unity. Paul urges them to follow the example of Christ, who emptied Himself of His divinity, assuming the role of a bond servant, exalting others over Himself, prompting God the Father to exalt Him above all others. Godly leadership is a function of submitting to the covenants God has made with us, including the marriage covenant, setting the proper pattern of all forms of institutions, including educational, governmental, medical, and religious institutions. Secular, progressive humanists, inspired by Satan, in their hatred toward God's covenants, through their endorsement of moral relativity and the new morality, fostering adultery, fornication, as well as feminism, homosexuality, polygamy, and transgender aberrations, have savagely attacked God's marriage covenant. Progressive humanists over the years have succeeded in making divorce as easy as falling off a log, and murder on demand (abortion) a convenience attended with no longer any trace of resistance. Paradoxically, hedonism, a philosophy which holds that pleasure is the highest aim in life, can never lead to real pleasure, but seeking to please God by serving others brings maximum pleasure. The marriage relationship, becoming totally one with one another as God the Father and Jesus Christ are at one with one another, provides the pattern of the true meaning of love—not feelings, but actions (consisting of serving and caring). Keeping God's Commandments demonstrates the highest form of love. Along with all the other gifts in the universal Edenic Covenant, identifying God as our benevolent Creator, who designed this earth for mankind to tend and keep, providing the marriage covenant as a God-plane relationship, the Sabbath Day educates us for service in God's Kingdom.

John Ritenbaugh, comparing human behavior in the wake of natural disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, to unnatural disasters, such as bombs and military attacks, suggests that in the latter devastations people become dispirited, listless, as though they had lost their reason for living. Sadly, what has happened to our socio-cultural milieu in the past 70 years has been a systematic undermining of morality, and a bizarre redefinition by leftist, progressive social engineers as to what constitutes normal and as to what constitutes abnormal. In this nation five unelected judges, three of them bitter feminist women, have, at least in their woefully deficient, reprobate minds, nullified or abrogated God's Edenic Covenant with mankind, which established marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. Earlier these reprobate justices rejected God's prohibition on murder, allowing abortion of millions of unborn children These amoral, secular, 'progressive' humanists have made themselves total arbiters of morality, pushing a hopelessly twisted form of pragmatism, thinking they have no accountability beyond this current life. We cannot expect the current compromised, corrupted aggregate of pandering elected politicians to be in sync with God. What the secular, 'progressive' humanists have not factored into their equation is that God is still alive, and that there are consequences for what they and we have done. God Almighty, not the United States Supreme Court, will have the final say in this matter.

John Ritenbaugh, reading a satirical poem from a high school student, demonstrating how basic religious rights have been stripped from our educational institutions, laments that this erosion of freedom and rights against the descendants of Jacob has taken many years to unfold. The attack on the cultures of America, Britain, and Northwestern Europe is blatantly anti-Semitic because these areas have the preponderance of Israel's population. Every one of the philosophers who have wreaked havoc upon greater Israel (including brother Judah) were themselves Israelite and Semitic (Marx, Rousseau, Descartes, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc.), damnably guilty of bringing down curses on their fellow Semites. The worst anti-Semite ever was not Hitler, Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, but Satan, the prince of the power of the air, who inspired the anti-God formulations of these toxic philosophies, making them the central desired outcomes of elementary through higher education in the Western world. Thankfully God, having promised to sift all Israel through all nations, has not lost one grain. With the insane rejection of the moral authority of the Bible, greater Israel has been incrementally dying. Perhaps the last reasonably sane decade was prior to the 1960's, when John Kennedy's assassination brought about a series of events triggering the dissolving of morals and ethics, as well as a savage shredding of the American Constitution. Today, America, Britain, and Europe are entering an apparent state of anarchy, similar to the condition described in the Book of Judges of each person doing his own thing. As Abraham Lincoln predicted, if this nation falls, it will be from traitorous, immoral forces from the inside.

Charles Whitaker, citing British philosopher Arnold Toynbee's warning that when a civilization responds to a challenge successfully, it survives, and when it does not, it commits suicide, proclaims that because America, over the last several decades, has not responded to the challenge, the die is cast for its destruction. History could be characterized as "a panoply of responses" from forceful, extreme, wimpy, or Band-Aid and non-existent. King David, because of his botched-up, indulgent, child-rearing practices, failing to deal with pride, rebellion, and self-centeredness of his offspring, brought havoc upon the nation of Israel. Responses on the macro or national level must begin on the micro or family level; there cannot be national governance unless there is first successful individual governance. In the 1930's, the comic book and the movie cartoon arrived on the American scene, exploring and traversing the boundaries of decency. Bimbo's Initiation is an example of this low level of decency. Conservative religious circles responded to the deterioration of moral values, forcing the comic book industry to police itself, more with the motivation of protecting their profits than from any twinge of conscience. In 1954, nevertheless, the descent into the cesspool was temporarily averted, at least for a couple of decades, when crime was punished instead of glorified, when policemen were respected instead of vilified, when females were drawn realistically, and sexual perversion was abnormal rather than normal as it is portrayed today by liberal progressive humanists. Since 1971, the comic industry has destroyed its own code, and smut and filth is the new normal. We have no bold Phineases today who are unafraid of political correctness. The die has been cast for morally bankrupt America (and modern Israel as a whole). As God's called-out ones, we must draw close to our God as our nation reaps the harvest of its crop of sin and iniquity.

John Ritenbaugh, reminding us that Ecclesiastes chapters 1-6 contains a sub-theme of materialism—specifically an indictment of the supposed satisfaction one receives from it suggests that materialism contains no lasting fulfillment. According to some studies, the higher a person is on the economic scale, the less altruistic he is inclined to become. The only lasting enjoyment comes from establishing a relationship with God, understanding that: (1) life is God's gift; (2) He desires us to spend our time preparing for an eternal relationship with Him; (3) the fruit of active involvement with God is eternal life; (4) by faith, seeking God will lead to an above-the-sun life; and finally, (5) if there is no kingdom of God, then nothing matters except what is going on in the here and now. We desperately need to seek Godly wisdom, a multi-faceted spiritual gift which helps us make practical use of all the other spiritual gifts. Wisdom is practical skill in living, coexistent with the fruits of God's Holy Spirit, a whole collection or spectrum of skills for living God's way—something that takes a lifetime to learn.

As most of the United States is going through one of the most relentlessly brutal winters in many years, it brings to mind the famous and oft-quoted words of William Shakespeare, spoken by his King Richard, which begin the soliloquy that opens the play, Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent" ...

Martin Collins, reflecting on an advertisement in which a slick, liberal actor endorsed the concept of pro-choice (murder of the unborn) while making fun of the pro-life concept, states that during the past 40 years, the American people have murdered 54 million babies—far outdistancing the deaths in Auschwitz, Dachau, and all the other death camps throughout the world. The number of babies slaughtered annually far exceed combined military deaths. Disgusting brain suction abortions are routinely performed in pregnancies that have gone beyond three months. Abortion is a result of an insane mental disposition on the part of the befuddled mother, and encouraged by a callused medical community. Medical publications like the Journal of the American Medical Association have indicated that the mental problems of the post-abortion mothers who experience guilt, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and even suicide, have mushroomed out of control. Not only do the mental disorders of the mother hopelessly deteriorate, but the mental health of the siblings, the spouse, and the extended family degenerate as well. As modern Israel rejects God and His Law, God has taken a hands-off approach to the sinning populace, leaving them to come to terms with the consequences of their turpitude. Legalized abortion reveals the moral decadency of a nation, people, and culture—a culture which has totally rejected God. Life begins at conception; science cannot alter that reality. Studies have shown that babies begin learning language within 30 hours of being in the womb. The Scriptures reveal that even before conception, God has planned the future course of the future being. This country, for the past 40 years, has not repented of murdering its young; how much longer will God withhold His wrath?

The serious Christian looks on this ever-declining world—a world that reflects the rebellious, anti-God attitudes of Satan the Devil—and wonders how anyone can truly live by faith. Some may even begin to doubt that God is in control of events here on earth. John Ritenbaugh, however, contends that God's sovereignty over His creation is complete, and the course of world events are moving according to His will.

Wise Solomon was inspired to write, "Because of the transgression of a land, many are its princes. . ." (Proverbs 28:2). In other words, if a people begin turning from righteousness, a natural consequence is greater human oversight--government--in one form or another. ...

It is almost tangible--the feeling that a hammer-blow is about to fall. It is reinforced constantly--by news reports, images from the media, and direct personal experience--that the nation is coming apart at the seams and lurching wildly out of control. ...

In the church, the argument over evolution was settled long ago, but such is not the case in the wider world. David Grabbe goes beyond the science to what embracing evolution actually says about a person's—and a society's—relationship with God.

There is no doubt that America's culture is plunging to depths many of us never imagined. To Christians, having to deal with the world is a frightening prospect. Here are five steps we can take to mitigate its influence on our lives.

And [God] called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; and the LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it. ...

John Ritenbaugh focuses upon the metaphor of eating as a symbol of fornication or the regarding of something as profane, illustrated by the harlot dismissing her affair as if she were consuming a meal,(Proverbs 7:18) and Esau, who regarded his birthright as profane, preferring the immediate gratification of a meal. (Genesis 25: 29-30). Jacob, on the other hand deceptive and cunning as he was, realized the intrinsic holy value of the birthright, willing to curb his appetites and delay his gratification as Christ curbed His appetite in His temptation from Satan to qualify as our Savior and High Priest. Like Jacob and Christ, we must learn to delay gratification, learning to distinguish holy from profane.

What did Jesus mean when He said the end time would be like the days of Noah? Did He mean that the last days would be violent and corrupt, or that the last days would come suddenly on an unsuspecting world? Amazingly, the waning years of this century fulfill both.

In many respects, America has lost its moral and ethical foundation. Richard Ritenbaugh presents evidence from the fields of medicine, politics and religion that the slide into immorality is quickening.

The book of Amos is an astounding prophecy, closely paralleling the conditions in modern Israel today. This first part deals with introductory materials, Israel's covenant responsibilities, God's judgment and how unrighteousness affects society.

John Ritenbaugh warns that human nature will degenerate as far as it is allowed. It has the tendency to quickly adapt to its environment, "adjusting" effortlessly to immorality and perversion. The conscience'the response of man's moral awareness to the divine revelation concerning himself, his attitudes, and his activities, restraining and permitting behavior (Romans 2:14)'is a function of a person's education, not instinctual. False doctrine causes a person to corrupt his conscience, making him tolerate and accept immorality. The conscience will automatically slide into the gutter (becoming hardened or addicted to sin) if God is not retained in our thoughts (Romans 1:21, Ezekiel 20:23-25). Conversely, if the heart accepts the truth, the conscience will follow suit. After we are converted and transfer our allegiance from the flesh to the spirit, the conscience (with feelings subordinated to rationality) gradually becomes tender, adjusting to God's standards.

John Ritenbaugh insists that the hallmark of true Christian character is humility, which comes about only when one sees himself in proper comparison to God. Then he can see himself in proper comparison to other men. The opposite of humility—pride, arrogance, and an inordinate self-esteem—leads us to put down, scorn, or make perverted comparisons between others and ourselves. Because a pride-filled person feels overlooked or his accomplishments undervalued, harboring pride leads to depression, frustration, self-centeredness, self-pity, and rebellion, totally eliminating God from the picture. What makes pride so dangerous is that even though we instantaneously see it in others, we seldom detect it in ourselves. God scorns the proud, but accepts the lowly.

John Ritenbaugh warns us that the book of Amos is specifically addressed to us- the end time church (the Israel of God) - the ones who have actually made the new covenant with God. Having made the covenant, we must remember that (1) privilege brings peril- the closer one draws to God, the closer will be the scrutiny, (2) we can't rest on past history or laurels, and (3) we (the ones who have consciously made the covenant with God) must take this message personally. Absolutely fair in His judgment, God judges Gentile and Israelite according to the level of moral understanding He has given them. No human being can escape the obligation to be human, as God has intended — treating other fellow human beings humanely (not as things or objects of profit). Edom's perpetual nursing of anger (harboring bitterness and hatred continually) against Israel is especially abhorrent to Almighty God- a candidate for the unpardonable sin.

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